The Gender Game 5 by Bella Forrest (uplifting novels .txt) 📕

“I wish I knew,” she said honestly, and sighed. “She’s strong, she’s a fighter, but in cases like these, we won’t know until she’s awake. And even then, there still may be some side effects, like memory loss, problems speaking, vision impairment, balance issues… The list goes on.”

I exhaled, the stone in the pit of my stomach growing. “So we did all this for nothing?”

Dr. Tierney shook her head sharply. “We drained the blood. We stopped her from dying. The bleeding in her brain was extensive. There’s no way to know how long she would have lasted without this surgery. I think we caught it before there was critical and irreversible damage, but I don’t believe in giving false hope. If it went well, then she’ll be up in two days… three at the most.”

I nodded, feeling numb. “Can I… Can I be with her?”

“Of course you can,” she said, sounding offended that I’d thought there was a possibility I couldn’t. “And while you’re at it, get some sleep. Really.”

As long as I could be near Violet, where I could check on her to make sure she was still there, then sleep sounded like the best plan I’d ever heard. I headed toward the door.

14

Violet

I woke up slowly. It seemed that recently, all I had been doing was waking up and falling asleep again. I’d come to before—I remembered in various degrees of clarity—more than once, with weird tubes protruding from me, restraining my movement and adding minor discomforts to the fading pain in my head and body. Some of the times I’d been scared, fought… but mostly I’d been sleeping. I couldn’t tell how many days it had been, but there had been darkness and light in various periods… Viggo was often with me when I woke, and his presence always convinced me that I was safe, that I wasn’t being treated only to be tortured by my enemies.

This particular moment of waking was significant, though, for several reasons. There was no sense of urgency or panic. None at all. Even odder, I felt strangely calm and relaxed, even taking a moment to stretch out my limbs as I slowly peeled back my eyelids.

My memory of what had happened after the palace and before the surgery hadn’t come back fully, just a vague sense of bad things happening, sometimes punctuated by flashes of memory that came to me in sharp, painful glimpses. But now I could remember waking several times before, as well as conversations—though all of them still had a fuzzy, surreal quality I couldn’t place.

Dr. Tierney had taken me off the IV earlier—I wasn’t sure how long ago, but I was sure it was hours, not days—and told me I would be getting some food in me, too, as soon as I rested a little longer. She’d even removed my catheter and helped me go to the bathroom, much to my embarrassment. She wasn’t here now, probably having stepped out to do errands, tend to her other patients, or maybe sleep.

The absence of pain in my head was… exhilarating. It still ached slightly, like a bad headache, but I was no longer confronted with agony every time I moved, and in comparison, it almost felt like an absence of pain altogether.

No, the pain wasn’t absent, but it was manageable. As my gaze started to come into focus, I panned it around the room, ridiculously happy as my eyes caressed objects while my mind provided me with their names—and they didn’t even spin! I noted with clarity, for the first time, that I was in the same room as before, but my clothes had been changed.

Out of habit, I reached up to push my hair out of my face, and was surprised to encounter a gauze bandage wrapped tightly around my head. Almost more alarming was the unfamiliar stubble on the top of my head, causing me to snatch my hand back in alarm. I’d felt this sensation before… but every time, I had forgotten and had the same reaction. This time, though, I looked around the room for some sort of mirror or reflective surface, but got distracted when the doctor pushed through the door carrying a pitcher.

“Dr. Tierney?” I croaked, and then coughed, suddenly realizing how dry my mouth was.

“Oh good, you’re awake.” Dr. Tierney smiled warmly and moved over to the other side of the bed, pouring some water into a cup. I eagerly grabbed it from her hands, slipping the straw between my lips and sucking down the cool liquid. It had a slightly metallic taste to it, but it seemed like it was the most delicious thing I had drunk in days. Who knew—maybe it was.

As I drank, Dr. Tierney tilted my head up with her fingers and shone a penlight in my eye. I stared blankly, but apprehension churned through me as she did so, my mind vaguely recalling a time when this would’ve caused instant pain. Confused by the obscure memory, I stopped. “Something… something happened,” I said.

Dr. Tierney withdrew the pen and gave me a thoughtful look. “What do you mean?”

I frowned and shook my head, unsure how to answer her question; and then I realized there were more pressing ones I needed answers to. “How are you here? Why are you here? Where’s Viggo? Where’s Tim? Does Desmond know? Oh my God, is she here? Are we all prisoners again?”

Questions were now spilling out of me so fast I could barely get them all out with my dry throat, and they would’ve continued had Dr. Tierney not raised her hand in a universal sign for slow down. I felt a twinge of impatience, but blinked, waiting.

“Oh my,” she said with a little smile, sitting down on the bed. I took being silenced as an opportunity to drink a little more. “Looks like switching to the weaker pain medication really did the trick… Where do I start?